


The Man Himself

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [94]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Brief Mention of That Bastard Putin, Enemies to Lovers, James Bond AU, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 14:38:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15439257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: It’s not as if Steve’s never been struck dumb before, found himself tongue-tied at a time when he should’ve been smooth.





	The Man Himself

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: James Bond AU. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).

 

It’s not as if Steve’s never been struck dumb before, found himself tongue-tied at a time when he should’ve been smooth. But it usually happens in front of his bosses, when he’s called on the carpet behind the red leather doors of N’s office when he gets back from a mission, the proverbial world having been saved but with some small detail done in a way that N doesn’t like.

It does not, for the record, ever occur in the face of an adversary; in this case, a Russian agent who would like nothing more than to see Steve fail spectacularly. Which is honestly the man’s job description to a T. Except this particular man who’s pointing a gun at Steve’s chest, who’s holding said gun with a goddamned metal hand, is _gorgeous_ : dark hair, hazel eyes, and a body whose build is expertly outlined by the tuxedo he’s wearing; but then, Steve always did have a thing for men in formal dress.

They’d been chasing each other for days, a continental kind of cat and mouse that’s raced from Mumbai to Madrid, from Stockholm to Nice, and now, they’re in Almalfi, a town cut into the seaside cliffs of Italy, standing toe-to-toe on the balcony of Steve’s hotel room, the whole of the city unspooling beneath them and tumbling towards the sea. The sun’s long set and the air’s a little cooler and Steve had let himself get a bit sloppy. He’d shrugged off his dinner jacket and poured himself a drink and padded out to lean over the bannister and stare out at the night. He’d been feeling melancholy, truth be told, a little lonely.

Well. He’s not wanting for company now.

“Well,” the Russian said, more than a little triumph in his voice. “Here we are.”

Steve lifted his hands a little and edged away from the balustrade, from the long dark drop below. The Russian hissed at him, made his grip on the gun a little more pointed. “Yeah,” Steve said. “Hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long. I took a walk on the beach after dinner; on a whim, you know? Sorry if that meant you’ve been sucking mothballs in the wardrobe for longer than you’d planned.”

“This is a thing I have noticed about you English: you assume other people want to hear it when you speak. You think a lot of your own voice, don’t you?”

“When I have something to say, yeah.”

The other agent’s eyes brightened, like sudden candles in the shadows, and he stepped closer, the tip of his gun now a hand’s length from Steve’s chest. “Hmm. There is one thing I would like to hear you say. Very much."

Steve shrugged, kicking himself for leaving his holster on the bed. No doubt the Russian had palmed his pistol, too. Fantastic. “I don’t usually take requests, but hey, you’re giving me every reason to listen.”

Then the Russian did the damnedest thing:

He laughed.

His eyes never left Steve’s and his metal finger never moved from the trigger, but: he laughed.

It was a nice sound, surprisingly so; one that made Steve of s’mores, for some reason, of melted marshmallows and chocolate running sticky down his hand.

It also, unhelpfully, put a match to his simmering crush on the guy, the same one who’d been trying to actively murder him for weeks, or at the very least maim. It wasn’t just that he was hot; the Russians had always had a particular talent for recruiting (or drafting) honeypots. It was that it’d been a long, long time since Steve had been bested by anyone, since he’d gone head to head with anyone who could keep pace as long as this man had, who could make the work feel like a challenge, the best kind, the kind that made Steve want to do better, to win.

And maybe that was part of the reason he’d been so blue before, why he’d felt the need to wander out of the casino and drift down to the water, to shuck off his shoes and wander in and out of the waves. Their game was drawing to a close there in Almalfi, he could feel it. He’d had three or four chances in the last couple of days to take the Russian out once and for all; to put a bullet in his head or crack open his skull and permanently knock out his lights. But he’d hesitated, each and every time, and until this moment, until he was staring down the other man’s gun, he’d had no idea why.

Now, it hit him like a splash of scotch to the heart: Steve _liked_ this guy, this agent with a metal arm and an angel’s face who was downright determined to kill him, to spill his blood in the most beautiful place he’d seen in years, all so that some Putin-backed businessmen could sell weapons to the highest bidders, the lowest forms of criminal life. And what’d all that sentiment gotten him, huh? All his mooning at the ocean, his gloomy sense that somewhere in his life, long ago, he’d taken the worst kind of wrong turn, the kind that only seems wrong when you realize that road behind you is blocked, that you can’t go back, can’t escape the way that you came.

He’d been doing this a long time, laying his life out for Queen and Country, and what was he left with? Scars in his skin and in his mind of all the awful things that he’d done, the necessary evils he’d committed. He studied the Russian’s face, the way it was transformed by his smile, his laughter, into something even more lovely, a portrait of what Steve had missed: a quiet life, somewhere. A home. A brilliant, beautiful man at his side who would take no shit, leave no room for excuses. Who would challenge Steve at each and every step and make Steve goddamn grateful for it, each of them the whetstone to the sword of the other’s body and mind.

God, he thought, he was getting old, wasn’t he? Old and sentimental. Not a good look for a spy.

“So?” he said, trying to put some steel back in his voice. “What is this magical thing you want to me to say before you spill my blood all over this beautiful balcony, eh?”

The Russian’s mouth was still turned up. “You will think I am joking.”

Steve looked pointedly down at the gun. “I think that’s damn unlikely.”

“I have been watching you for many days now,” the Russian said, “chasing. No, not so much chasing as following, because I knew that wherever you came to, I would come also.”

Steve didn’t say anything.

“And in all this time, following, I have thought--I have not wanted to think, but I have--that you are unique, unlike anyone I have met before in this work.” Here some of the light in his eyes faded. “This work we do, it diminishes, yes? Grinds you down as time passes.”

“It can, yes.”

“But in you, I have not seen this. No signs of this wear.” He cocked his head, his long hair tumbling out from behind his ears. “You seem, eh, what is the right word? Mmm, not touched, I guess. You seem whole.”

Was this guy honestly reading his aura, or claiming he could see into Steve’s soul?

(Was his grip on the gun loosening ever slightly?)

Both of these things could be true.

It said something about Steve’s state of mind, though, which one he was paying attention to.

He cleared his throat. “So you want me to confirm your hypothesis? Tell you that you’re right, you’ve got me down to a T, so then you can shoot me with full confidence in your ability to diagnose the mental makeup of strangers?”

The Russian stared at him like he’d started speaking in tongues. “What is this? No. No, you are misunderstanding.”

“Really?” Steve said with more pique than he felt. “Then what is it? Please do enlighten me.”

The man inched closer and lowered his weapon--what in the actual _hell_ \--lowered his weapon with one hand and reached for Steve’s shoulder with the other. “That. Say that again.”

His touch was heavy, electric, like a sudden spark in the electricity grid, and parts of Steve that had been rusty for ages kicked up all of a sudden, rattled the bars of his heart.

“Say what?”

( _The gun_ , the well-trained part of Steve screamed in N’s voice; _get the goddamned gun from him, you knob_!)

But the Russian’s eyes were alight again, tipping their fire into Steve’s, and his body was so close. Fuck the gun; it was the man himself that Steve yearned to touch.

“Please,” the man said, soft. The word nearly floated away on the wind. “Say please to me again, huh?”

“If I say it, will you let me go?”

The other agent laughed again, drew the sound over Steve’s cheek, and Steve speared his hands under the man’s jacket, his fingers swallowing the warm press of the Russian’s shirt. Which only made the man chuckle harder, draw closer, give Steve the hint of a kiss.

“If you keep touching me like that,” the Russian said, “then most assuredly, no.”

“Good.” Steve pressed his mouth to the other man’s jaw, to the edge of his ear. “Then yes. Please.”


End file.
